abuse

[CN: Toxic parents] I am a big fan of inappropriate humor (especially when said humor is tinged with sarcasm), and I’m an even bigger fan of using comedy to deal with life’s ugliness. But when the humor is at the expense of someone unknowing and innocent, like a child, I no longer consider it funny.

Although divorce would’ve been the right thing for Mom and Joe, they still used it as a weapon against each other. I was often caught up in the crossfire. Sometimes, I worry that Ryan is going to come home from work, drop his bag at the door, and drop an “I want a divorce” bomb on me.

My mother saw in my brother a carbon copy of herself; every side-eye and negative comment was an echo of offensive remarks made about her own behavior as a child. Whenever my brother got into trouble for his disregard for authority or bad attitude, my mother saw it as a victory: My brother wasn’t just sticking up for himself, he was sticking up for my mother.

For years, I didn’t know I was hearing voices. When it started to happen, it felt like someone else’s thoughts were being inserted into my mind, shouting at me, undermining my reality — impossible to control.

Here’s the thing: I have benefited greatly from reading stories from others, the daring narratives of those who have histories similar to my own. We feel more human when we hear that other humans relate to an experience we maybe thought was our very own private hell.

This ad is the furthest thing from funny. It’s not humor, it’s not satire, it’s just plain distasteful. Good humor punches up. But there’s no humor to be found in an issue that, according to the Center For Disease Control, killed 47,055 people in 2014. Of those over 47,000 people that died of a drug overdose, opiates — like heroin — were involved in 61% of those deaths.

The more he pressured and guilted me, the more distant I felt from him, and the less I felt like becoming sexually aroused was even a faint possibility.

My father was an abusive man, plain and simple.

That wasn’t all he was, but to my mother, that's who he was. He was a controlling individual who perhaps took the scripture, “Wives, submit to your husbands” a tad bit too literally — and when my mom didn’t submit, she paid the price. Often with a blow to the head.